How to build audiences with single-subject news products
As audiences gain more choices for news, they are increasingly turning to specialized sources. That represents a challenge to general-interest publishers but also creates an [...]
How to plan for expansion and growth of a new content vertical
What you're ultimately doing with a single-subject news site — to go back to the very beginning — is creating obsessives and superfans. "Cultivating many [...]
Choose a topic for which you can create ‘obsessives’
"Create obsessives," digital director of Vanity Fair Mike Hogan said when I asked him about why Vanity Fair built a Hollywood-specific section. Successful single-subject news [...]
How to create and execute a niche content strategy
After the first step in building a niche vertical of identifying the topic, which involves assessing your audience, your brand, your capacity and the potential [...]
Worksheet: Plan your single-subject news site
The American Press Institute developed this worksheet as a guide to getting you started with identifying a topic and building a single-subject news site. Before [...]
How to keep readers coming back for more: 10 good questions with Nir Eyal, author of Hooked
Much of a news organization’s desire to grow audiences, and particularly subscribers, depends upon getting people to come back, over and over. But what is [...]
The forces that shape audiences online: 9 good questions with James Webster
The Fields of Dreams principle — “if you build it, they will come” — doesn’t apply to audience attention anymore. It’s not enough to just [...]
The business behind BuzzFeed’s growth and expansion: 8 good questions with BuzzFeed’s Eric Harris
When Eric Harris started at BuzzFeed, they were a six-person technology lab experimenting with how content was being shared. As the only “business” person then, [...]
Demystifying the news nerds team with a ‘science fair’: 5 good questions with NPR’s Becky Lettenberger
The “news nerds” that make up the news application and multimedia teams usually sit in a different place, speak a different language, and work on [...]
Infusing design into your newsroom culture: 7 good questions with John Maeda
John Maeda’s work has crossed many disciplines -- design, technology and business -- and now, he works at the intersection of all three. Former president [...]
